In addition, during the weekends we were home we participated in our local area events including teaching at Voyagers and The Underground, monthly AgoL meetings, Austin Pride Parade, and various cigar socials. We often made time with our leather family during week nights to ensure we kept up those ties, after all a year is too long to be away from those we hold so dear. On a wider scale, we each continued to contribute to Leatherati.com and slave was elected Vice President for Women in Leather International.

In all, we spent 70 nights away from our warm bed in 10 different states. We taught 40+ hours of workshops to approximately 480 kinky people. We sat for countless hours offering one on one mentorship and encouragement to individuals and couples never turning down a request for our time. Every conference we attended got our full dedication and attention, we worked hard to remain available and approachable staying in the lobbies, classrooms, and social events until we finally happily fell into our hotel beds.

Personally, we experienced joy and growth throughout. We had some challenges and overcame them together. We shared moments of adventure and beauty that were magnificent.

We slept when we could…for Master that included late at night in an IHOP and on nearly every plane we were on.

We drank way too much port in Las Vegas, they were serving it in red solo cups and slave forgot it wasn’t wine.

A delightful taxi driver took us down the famous crooked street in San Francisco on the way to the brunch that was so good slave wept with joy.

In San Jose we happened upon an amazing gift shop attached to the Catholic Church and Master indulged his passion for all things Virgin of Guadalupe.We played Cards Against Humanities with our leather family and friends in the atrium of a hotel in Fort Lauderdale till we were all too exhausted to play.

In Alaska after winning the People’s Choice Award for 2012, slave delivered the keynote address for NE4. We drank glacier melt out of the side of a mountain outside Anchorage on the breath taking Turn Again Arm Highway. slave fed a reindeer dandelions while Master smiled with one of the biggest grins ever as he watched his slave squeal with glee.In Atlanta, we resisted the temptation of gas station fried chicken while succumbing to the allure and high school memories of MD 20/20 (well we succumbed to the temptation of buying MD anyway. Upon recalling that the Mad Dog has a bite far more fearsome than its bark, we smartly poured it down the drain.) Later we shared bad Margaritas on the patio in front of the hotel till 4 a.m. laughing as Master had his slave tell stories about cats in bags and dead horses and street fights.

In Dallas Master served as a judge for Great Plains Olympus while slave served as judge’s girl.

slave managed to not curse in writing with one exception in Tucson when she worked the word “poop” into an example and jotted it on the white board. People took pictures of it after class… Master was Soooooo proud of his slave that day.

Master surprised our friend Master Thompson by decking out in a full body bunny costume for Halloween. Master Thompson told Master he had a recurring hot fantasy about Master as a bunny. Basically making dreams come true is what we are all about… no matter how odd the dream.

There was molasses and misfortune. Enough said about that.

Basically we spent our title year working very hard and playing even harder. Along the way we met hundreds of amazing people, shared meals with many of them, found many close and lifelong friendships, connected with and learned from our elders across the country, and taught anyone who wanted to listen that they are the author of their own one true way. Though our classes covered various topics each of them contained the same message, Masters and slaves must trust their own path to be their best way. Master said many times, “Be committed to the people, not the fantasy” and “the quickest way to ruin a relationship is to try to make it look like someone else’s idea of M/s.”

As we head toward our competition at South Plains for International Master and slave 2014, our deepest hope is that we made you all proud and that we continue to serve the community we love so intensely.

The trouble with thank you lists is that invariably someone who is really important gets overlooked. Inevitably those persons that don’t get mentioned are the very people who do the little things that deserve the most recognition. They also tend to be the people who don’t do things for recognition or because they expect someone is watching; instead they are the people who do things simply because they see a need and recognize that they have the ability to help.

That said, we want to take a moment to thank some people who made several of those usually unsung contributions that helped not only make this year possible but also consistently inspired us to be the best people we could be. Without further ado, we wish to thank in no particular order: Joseph, Judi, Elegant, Archer, Master Obsidian, slave namaste, Mr and Mrs Jeep, Goddess Indigo, Dr Clockwork, Senor Jaime, Master Ian, slave jerri, Wayne Brawner, Kathleen, Foxfinder, Sarha, Loren, Alex, The Thompson Family of OKC, Sir Gareth and slave toi, Master Tallen and slave George, and our children.

Recently I changed my profile on FetLife to state that my orientation is “Queer.” This does not actually reflect a change in who I like to have sex with or what turns me on.It does reflect a growth in my understanding of myself and how I interact with the world around me. How I got to this place in my sexual identity is a bit of a journey and I would like to take a minute to share that.

My first romantic experiences were with my BFF in grade school. She and I were attached at the hip sort of friends. We fought like cats and dogs, we adventured out and around the little harbor town we lived in, and we stirred up way too much trouble.I still remember the day, Valentine’s Day actually, that our parents were not paying enough attention to us in our opinions and we embarked on intentionally getting as drunk as we possibly could on the liquor in my Mom’s stash. This all ended with her attempting to walk/jog through the glass sliding door at my house, braking her nose, nearly bleeding out from the huge cuts she got, and having the doctor at the ER tell her mom that she almost died from alcohol poisoning. It was a crazy thing for kids to be doing but life was rough for each of us, our families were broken dysfunctional messes, and we were young and stupid. Aside from our wild times finding trouble, we also touched each other and kissed and cuddled. All of that seemed natural. We loved each other in our own way and neither of us thought we were doing anything romantic, we were just playing.

Through my younger years, I often had a close friend who was a girl who I would kiss and fool around with but that was different than when I started having sex with guys. That is how I saw it, I was just doing what seemed reasonable with my friends who were girls and having actual ‘real’ sex with guys. I had no frame of reference. I had no internet to tell me what sex was.I had no class in school that explained what sex between women looked like. I had no friends who identified as lesbian.I had a few friends who quietly admitted they were gay but again, that sex seemed like ‘real’ sex to me because sex was defined by penises in my mind. I honestly never thought about what sex between two women would look like. It wasn’t a concept I had any framework for.

In my house growing up, being gay was described as a terrible horrible thing.I had a Great Uncle who had lived in a closeted relationship with his ‘friend’ for 20+ years.My family was embarrassed and spoke very rude things about him when he wasn’t around. They were not terribly kind even when he was in the room.His partner was never at any family functions.My grandmother spoke of him, her only brother, as though he was her dependent child whom she needed to protect from himself. When his partner died, my grandmother refused to allow my aging Great Uncle to attend his funeral because, “it wouldn’t look right.” My father constantly degraded what he called ‘the gays’ and would make terrible jokes about them.When my older brother was arrested, multiple times, became addicted to drugs, failed and dropped out of high school, and ran away from home over and over again my father would always chase him down and try to get him out of trouble. Hiring lawyers and whatever it took to try to help him.

Dad always said, “No matter what you do you are always my son.”That all changed when my brother came home from running away and introduced my father to his lover, Cornelius. Once my brother said, “I’m gay,” Dad never treated him the same.I remember my Dad saying, “He is so far gone that now he thinks he is gay, he is not my son that I raised anymore.” My understanding of what being gay meant was warped and negative.I had no actual understanding, only fear and hate taught to me.

As an adult, I had lots of kids very young and became a very isolated radical believer in a conservative religion. For ten years I had no further opportunities to learn about sexuality.I worked very hard to suppress any sexuality I had that might exist outside of the ‘marriage bed.’ In that bed, our particular version of faith taught anything was fair game.It never occurred to me to have sexual anything with anyone, male or female or trans person or other, except for my God given loser of a husband. Even in that restricted sexual world I was kinky as hell and had no idea that is what I was.I really thought all people had rough sex all the time. Choking, getting tied up, watersports, etc…all of that I assumed was normal and just not spoken about on Sunday morning.

When I finally got out of that marriage and came to the community, I really had no tools to define or understand myself with.I explored swinging and anonymous internet hook ups, BDSM, and power exchange.It was all a wild rush of freeing sexual experiences. Multiple men in my bed was wonderful and exciting and felt very liberating from the years of blindness induced by my own efforts to follow a faith. Eventually I also shared my body, my bed, my sexuality with a few women as well. Here and there, nothing romantic. Just part of the hedonistic joy I was finding in sex.

Then Master came into my life and we began our relationship together.Very early in our friendship he had questioned me as to why I identified as heterosexual. We had long talks about it. I was convinced I was straight, mostly because I didn’t have any idea what else I would be. He asked me if I had ever had sex with a woman.My honest answer was, “No, never.”He looked at me sideways and asked about several experiences with women that he knew I had had. I said, again honestly, “Oh, that isn’t sex…there was no penetration.”I thought he was going to fall out of his chair.I really could not understand what was so funny. He talked with me for a long time about sex between women and asked basic questions I had never considered. Things like, “Well then, how do two women have sex?” and “What is sex?”

It wasn’t that I thought sex between women was bad or that sex between any types of people was bad.I love sex!All sex. I just had never stopped to think about the basics and I guess the community around me never thought to say, “Hey are you naïve beyond reason and we just don’t know it.”Because really who would think a woman in her 30s in the kink community with all sorts of partners wouldn’t know what sex was. Looking back I find myself amazed at how naïve I really was.

After those talks, I recognized that I had been having sex with men, women, and genderfluid folks for as long as I had been having sex. I realized that throughout my life I had often been assumed to be a lesbian. I could remember half a dozen women who had really gotten confused and pissed when I said I was straight after they had been involved in what they surely thought was courtship and some of them a sexual relationship with me.I had been chided for being “a breeder” which I didn’t understand. I had held a couple of women in my arms as they cried about me not entering into a ‘relationship’ with them while I didn’t understand what was going on at all.

I wasn’t trying to be mean.I wasn’t trying to be stupid. I just had no idea what they saw in me or what they wanted from me. I was dense. Well, better put, I was ignorant.

After Master helped me understand what I had been doing my whole life, I started to identify my orientation as ‘bisexual.’ During the past year though I began to feel that wasn’t really right either.Last year at WIL-Fest I had some amazing energy exchanges with women.I once again found myself learning what ought to have been obvious to me but simply wasn’t…I was attracted to people.Not genders.I was attracted to their energy, how they felt to me, how my body and mind and spirit responded to them.Gender was completely not a factor for me in who and what turned me on…it is the way they ‘feel.’

Energy and energy-sex are things I have little ability to describe.After a year of exploring energy-sex and entering into a relationship with someone who really engages in energy as sexuality I finally realized that is what does it for me. I am neither bi nor het, I am something else. Queer fits how my sex orients.

Master was reluctant to allow me to identify as queer for several reasons.First and foremost, he is a words man.Words have power and he was not comfortable with the word ‘queer’ because it is a relatively new term and not clearly defined.Some people see ‘queer’ as a community affiliation, some see it as meaning ‘confused’, some see it as being attracted to all types of people. He wasn’t sure it would be clear.He felt ‘bisexual’ indicated logically that I am sexually attracted to both women and men.Clear and clean.

He also was not comfortable with the notion that I might be viewed as taking on some sort of trendy identity that the Queer community would not welcome me to share. He has great respect for the GLBTQ community and would not want to seem to be usurping a word or term that many before us had worked so hard to empower.

That was until we sat on the patio this past weekend at Southeast LeatherFest and engaged in hours of conversations about gender, orientation, and identity. We talked with our friends about my desire to identify myself as queer.Some said no, that I wasn’t queer because ‘queer’ means “Queer as folk” and “you with him looking like a het couple just isn’t queer to me.”

Back and forth the conversation went until our friend Master Ian finally said, “Would you have sex with a woman?” “Yes” “A man?” “Yes” “A trans man?” “Yes” “A gender fluid person?” “Yes.”Master Ian turned to Master and said, “That isn’t a binary…it isn’t one of two choices…she isn’t Bisexual.” Master nodded and smiled.He recognized that he learned an important lesson about gender and orientation identities and about shaking away all those old enculturated biases we don’t even know we have.

The lens we each see the world through is never as clear and crisp as we imagine.Master is always willing and open to learning when he has a perspective that he hasn’t recognized as bias. His leadership over my life is fueled by his own growth and self-exploration.He is an amazing man. After that conversation he agreed that yes I am queer and I feel happy and centered in my sexuality in a way I never have before. Making that change on my FetLife profile is trivial compared to the journey I took to get there.

I am a slave and I am queer. I am so thankful that I have a life that encourages me to learn and grow.

Recently I have gotten a hint of the stress that negative comments can cause. Don’t misunderstand, I am not complaining that I am personally over wrought or stressed out. I am a pretty solid, steady person as it relates to dealing with conflict or ‘drama’. I have been in the BDSM community long enough to have learned not to put value or energy into it for it does you little benefit personally and very rarely helps anyone else.

That said, I do find myself a bit sad that I read many negative and judgmental online posts directed toward folks in the community who work hard at serving others. Event producers, group leaders, and title holders seem to be ‘fair game’ of a sort. I am not sure why that is so rarely challenged. I suspect most of the folks these types of threads are complaining about or tearing down are simply busy, used to it, and possibly choose not to feed the threads.

Maybe next time you find yourself thinking negative things about one of these types of folks, try contacting them. Talking to them. Expressing your concerns directly. Making a place in someone’s life by showing them respect is the best way to have them listen to and respect your criticism. Posting online is likely not how you would like a conversation to begin about what you may or may not be doing wrong in your life.

Publicly announcing you don’t approve of someone who has never specifically sought your endorsement does nothing to build anyone and possibly does damage to you, them, and worst of all, to some new person who sees your post and fears that they too will someday have to stand up to someone like you if they try to start a group or run for a title or whatever they might have had the potential to do.

If you aren’t someone who is likely to make negative comments or post essays about things you don’t like, if instead you also read these types of posts and think it makes you a little sad too, then take a moment to post a compliment. This does not need to be a confrontation or argument, simply let the folks you support know you are there for them. If feeding the thread doesn’t feel helpful, then try sending someone a kind note, drop them a smile via text, or whatever feels right.

I know folks have the right to complain, I respect that, but if we want to take the time to really help one another improve let’s do it in the right way.

Master assigned me a task recently. He said that I was to write him an essay expressing the nature of what it feels like to be owned in the everyday. He commented that he wanted it to be erotic. Formatting was impacted by the fact that this was written to be read aloud as an ‘entertainment’ piece during our recent Immersion gathering of MAsT Austin.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He has been at it for days…maybe weeks. Must be weeks now that I think of it.

Memories surface.

Him sitting outside smoking with a far off expression. He seems to be miles away. “What are you thinking about, Sir?” I ask. With that knowing grin and lusty spark in his eye he says, “Nothing for you to know about until Friday.” I feel a shiver dart up my spine.

We are gathering our family for dinner. The kids chatter and bounce around washing hands, setting the table, arguing about who is getting a drink for who. “Almost Friday you know,” he quietly whispers as he passes me to take his seat at dinner. I blush but he is cool and collected. No one else hears or knows he is inside my soul tinkering for his amusement.

“Have I told you how much I want to consume you?” he asks softly as he takes my hand into his at the end of a long day. “Not today Sir,” I reply. “Well, I want to consume you entirely.” A raspy growl accompanies his smile now, “It is almost time you know.” I squirm in my suddenly warm seat and he chuckles.

He plots.

The plotting, he has said, is one of his favorite parts. He has been at it it seems since the day he first met me. Plotting is one of the pleasures he indulges himself in and tortures me with. The not knowing is painful. He relishes the curiosity that tweaks at my thoughts constantly.

He sprinkles our conversations with reminders that give away nothing…. yet serve to keep raw my desire to know and my fear. He flicks innocent words that light my mind as expertly as he can flick a whip to light my skin. He pinches my subconscious for his amusement.

Only a few moments now…or will it be minutes…longer? I lay panting in anticipation. Just a minute ago I was downstairs, sitting with him, watching the game.

Some timer must have gone off inside him…I silent alarm triggered. DING! He simply stood, wordless, grabbed my hair and yanked me to my feet. Stumbling behind him as he drug me up the stairs. I cried a little as some of my hair gave way to him and yanked free of my head. The sobs left my mouth and could have disappeared like the sound of a tree falling alone in the woods for all I know…he did not even glance.

My tears are just decorations on his property.

I am kneeling face against the mattress…naked? How quickly he made that happen. He pulled off my clothes with wicked efficiency. So suddenly I hardly realized what was happening until it was done, nothing but reddened cloth-burns to show he has done anything at all. Now the chill in the room feels arctic as I shutter in fear. I am panting and wet.

So quickly he has dispatched me, I am stunned and awestruck.

I am a rabbit dangling by one painful leg from the perfectly hidden snare.

I can hear him walk to the bedside. I do not turn to look. I want to look, need to look… but I know better. He was very clear after he shoved my face down into the mattress and swatted my ass until it rose to the height he deemed fit. He said only, “Do not move,” and walked away. I long to turn my head and look to see what is making that rustling sound. Why do I smell leather and alcohol? Was that a click of metal or a chink of glass?

I do not move.

My will is not my own.

My body is not my own.

I am shuttering and frozen. I listen for every hint of a sound but am only truly aware of my own breathing. Each muscle hums with fierce tension.

I am high voltage wire that he has electrified. I am his conduit, I am his.

The shock of his fingers brushing my side gently flies through me as lightening. I nearly fall from my kneel as my body leaps away from his spark but he grabs a handful of my ass and steadies his property back into the place he has plotted to have it be.

I feel leather swat against my hip. Then again. The rhythm builds and I sway slightly under it. I feel pain warming then boiling then icy. Time? Does it go by? Is it seconds or hours?

I am only now.

I hear him grunting now as he blazes his will across my flesh. The rhythm is primal, my heart beats to it, my heart bends to his rhythm. I have no idea what he might be using to inflict this on me. Is it leather? Metal? Rope? Glass? No thoughts to that anymore. No thoughts at all any more.

My mind and body are in shock and chaos. His mind and body are focused and intense. Yin and yang. Master and slave.

Suddenly He is inside me. Impaling me with his lustful appetite.

I am base instinct, life transmuting into blazing conscience.

I am undone. I weep, scream, claw at the mattress trying to escape. No chance. He pegs me to him and uses me deeply.

I feel my soul spinning out of control toward the edge of oblivion, then suddenly the snap as I hit the end of the leash, I feel him centering. I become locked in orbit around him. He spins me around him like a slingshot.

The classic question too often posed to slaves: What if your Master told you to [insert random crazy ass no one in their right mind would do action] would you do it?

You can fill in that blank with any of a myriad of things each more nutty that the last.

Jump off a bridge: The classic homage to your mother’s line of, “If your friends jumped off a bridge would you?”

Commit suicide: This one has many variations, my favorite was “disembowel yourself,” but any self termination fits here.

Kill someone: Again variations on this with descriptions of the victim the slave is called to kill including the slave’s children, the Master, strangers, or political figures.

Commit some other crime: Rob a bank, steal a car, mug someone, jaywalking, etc. You are really only limited by your imagination here.

Ok so why are folks so fascinated by these imagined quandaries? More often than not, these types of questions are posed by someone who is not in a 24/7 M/s relationship. They are trying to understand what the heck being a slave really means. They feel that slavery is somehow totally unrealistic and the notion of being owned by someone in our modern society seems pretty crazy.

They do not see how or even why a person in a Western culture would sign over the deed to their entire life to another person. For many folks, M/s looks a whole lot like a false pretense of insisting your fantasy is somehow real. Imagine some who insists that they really do have invisible wings that no one else can see, or that they are not just into puppy play but are a fully fledged werewolf who literally can mutate into a wolf anytime they want. Most folks, upon hearing these sorts of claims, would cry “Shenanigans!” and who can blame them?

That last one about the werewolf I have actually encountered. With great seriousness a young man explained to me that this was his reality. That he could at will transform into a wolf. I decided to avoid any sort of detailed discussion of said “werewolf” ability but my first thought was, “Ok, show me.” Being somewhat familiar with how upsetting reality testing can be for someone with a delusion, I decided to just nod and say, “Ah ok cool,” and wander off to visit with different less lupine people.

Is my statement that I am a slave really all that different? Granted it is different in that I am not claiming to shape-shift which would seem to violate all sorts of physical and biological laws, but in some ways it seems equally fanciful. In a country where legalized slavery does not exist, in a society where individual responsibility is an expectation, in a culture where women and minorities have sacrificed their lives to attain freedom, I, a middle class white American woman, claim to be ‘a slave’ to my Master.

What does that mean? I can’t blame a reasonable person for asking the reality testing rational questions I mentioned above. Moreover, I can’t blame anyone for questioning lots of other less extreme things, for example:

What if your Master decided to cheat on you?

What if your Master became an alcoholic?

What if your Master abused you? Is that even possible?

What if your Master violates your consent?

What if you are going through a difficult time and just don’t feel like doing what your Master demands of you?

What if you have a bad moment, hour, or day and talk back to your Master?

What if your Master really pisses you off?

These are not the first questions folks pose, but they are questions that are reasonable to wonder about. What does 24/7 slavery look like in the everyday world of going through life? Here is really where the heart of the “Shenanigans” cry comes from. How can you claim to be something that is so contrary to being a free willed individual?

Being a slave in an M/s dynamic is a voluntary choice. It is my free will decision. There is not a bill of sale or legally binding contract that requires me to be a slave. There is no societal requirement that I be a slave. There is no familial obligation that I am a slave. I simply choose to be enslaved. I can try to express in words why I personally feel that my slavery is now permanent, why I know in my core that I am not ever going to reject my position as slave or change my mind about belonging to my Master, but the words will fall short of ‘proof.’ For me, it is similar to my self-identity as a mother, an American, or a woman. I could no more change those things than I could change that I am my Master’s slave but I came to this identity of my own free will.

Have I convinced anyone that I am a slave any better than my good friend the werewolf convinced me he could shape-shift? Probably not. Did I answer all those nagging questions about what if? Not at all. Am I a slave? Yes.

Still you may find yourself calling “Shenanigans” and to that all I can say is let me show you. If my werewolf friend had been able to transform into a wolf man before my very eyes, I would believe he was indeed a werewolf. The evidence in front of my eyes would be indisputable. I am living as my Master’s slave. Watch me, see me, get to know me, and I think you will see that I am not imagining a fantasy but I am living my identity.

One of the earliest memories I have is from when I was 4 years old. I remember my mother being very upset and then leaving for several days. I remember her explaining to me that my great grandmother had died and that she was going to go back home to go to her funeral. I can still remember my mother’s face; her puffy tear filled eyes looking searchingly at me. I remember feeling like it was all okay and that I understood that she needed to go. I felt that death was important. After all, I knew what death was since I had had several pet frogs and a cat die. As much as a 4 year old can, I understood that death must be attended to and honored.

By the time I was 10, I was living with my father and his second wife hundreds of miles away from my mother. My mother called my father in a panic and explained that her father had just died and he needed to send me back to Indiana to attend the funeral. He refused and they had a huge fight about it. I remember he told me my grandfather died as part of explaining to me why it was so unreasonable that my crazy mother would expect him to foot the bill for an airline ticket. That is how at 10 years old I learned that death causes anger and frustration.

When I was 15 my father took our family on a sailing trip for several weeks. When we returned to our home dock, the harbor attendant was waiting for us anxiously with a note. My father called his sister from the club house at the marina and found out my 17 year old cousin had died in a shooting accident. Dad left for the airport without changing clothes and went to be with our extended family. It turned out that my cousin had been playing Rambo style roughhousing with several of my other cousins and thought it would be funny to get out my uncle’s service revolver as a prop. Somehow he managed to trip down a flight of stairs and shot himself in the head. He died in my cousin’s arms within moments. The family was devastated. I was confused by the whole tale. How was this a ‘shooting accident?’ Who thinks an actual gun is roughhousing fun? I was dismayed that my father seemed to carry on with this ‘shooting accident’ explanation of the events leading to my cousin’s death and so at 15 I learned that death is often shrouded with false history for the conveniences of those still living.

At 18 I gave birth to my first child. He was born after a long drawn out dramatic process that ended in an emergency C-section late in the evening. In the morning, as I fumbled to figure out what exactly a new mom was supposed to be doing to care for a newborn my stepmother arrived at my hospital room. I asked where my father was and she did not offer an explanation. This was striking because through the entire trials and tribulations of the prior day, my father had been present and more than accounted for. He was constantly asking doctors and nurses ten questions and stressfully hovering over me and eventually my newborn. So where the Hell had he gone? I couldn’t imagine why he would be absent. He called me a few hours later and broke the news that my 16 year old cousin, the youngest brother of the aforementioned now deceased cousin, had committed suicide in the night as I delivered my son. Several weeks later my aunt, mother of three sons, two of them now dead, came to see me and my new baby. I thought it odd that she would be up to traveling so soon after burying her youngest child until it became painfully obvious why coming to see my baby was so pressing. She had decided that her son had committed suicide so that he could be re-born as my son. Wow, talk about creeping out a too young mother who was already pretty freaked out by the totality of the situation. This time at the ripe old age of 18 I learned that death can make you crazy with grief.

When I was 24 I got a call one morning from my mother’s brother. In a ragged voice he told me, “She’s gone, she died, your mother, she died in her sleep, she’s gone.” I remember falling to the floor and wailing, collapsed from the weight of the shock and loss. I was undone in that moment like never before. I had just had my second child, a daughter, and my mother was scheduled to come and visit her for the first time just two days from then. I was grief stricken and suddenly understood that phrase was more than a poetic term. That was when I learn that death strips you naked and has its way with you. Death is overwhelming.

At age 32 I had just entered into my final semester of undergraduate school. I had four children by this point and was working my ass off to finally get my act together and be a responsible member of society as my father would have put it. Dad called me one evening and explained that he had stage four lung cancer. The doctors had decided they could not operate and Dad was going to try an experimental chemo. I once again felt Death the Great Overwhelmer clawing at my sanity. I pulled myself together and offered to come to help. He declined and said he would be fine. He was unable to attend my graduation. I sent him photographs. By that summer he was admitted to hospice care and finally asked me to come and help him. I spent the last weeks of his life with him as he died. I watched the care and service that the hospice team provided to our family. When he died, I was devastated but not broken. Dying can be done well. Love can transcend death. That is when I learned death can be comforted.

After my father died, I changed my graduate school plans from research to clinical and went into hospice work. Death and I had spent a good bit of time in each other’s company and I felt it was the right place for me. As I have worked with the deaths of others and their families these lessons have come in handy. I have been able to comfort and empathize with others. More importantly I have served as witness to their grief because I have learned that death can be so very lonely for those enmeshed in it.

So what does all of that mean? Well for me it has meant that I have learned to accept the gift of death. The gift is the knowledge of how precious life is. I have learned that no matter how old you are when you die, you are still too young. I have learned that you can do nothing to extend your days beyond what you are given. Fate stands ready with her scissors at some unknowable point in your personal timeline and nothing you can do or say will stay her hand from cutting you off. This is the gift that lights up each day for me. This is why I live an authentic passionate life. This knowledge resides in my thoughts constantly.

People often question my decision to live as a slave in a full-time lifestyle. For me, this life, the life of empowered service and loving devotion, is the life that I will never regret. We only get so much time on this planet and I know in my core that I will never wish I had one more day of being a vanilla wife. I will never long for an extra hour of a standard American pastime. I will never long for one more moment of selfish motivation. When I am attending my own death, I will only long for more time to serve him, to sit at his feet, to be fucked by him, to be undone by his pain and lust. The gift of death is that I know I too will die and so I choose to live each day fully surrendered to my beloved Master with no regrets.

Recently as we sat visiting with some dear friends on their patio, Master and I were talking about sex. This is not rare for us; we tend to be very comfortable talking about our sexuality and our experiences including the good, the bad, and the messy. This particular conversation turned toward female ejaculation. I suggested that while anatomy and such all likely impact why some women squirt and some don’t, I also felt like part of the cause for non-squirting could be attributed to a woman feeling self-conscious during sex.

As we grow up, women tend to be made very aware of their hygiene and physical appearance. This is perhaps not universally true in all cultures, but it does seem to be fairly standard issue in the United States. Think of all the warnings about, “Be sure you always have clean underwear on in case you get into an accident.” Consider that smelling like a human being is considered poor form and so deodorant companies make millions from selling us things to keep us smelling less like humans and more like flowers. Being clean and presentable are part and parcel of most girl’s upbringing, certain they were part of mine.

I think this can also be said of boys and their upbringing, yet I honestly think it is to a lesser degree. Boys know that getting dirty outside and playing with frogs is allowed now and again. Men are reared to understand that while there is certainly a time and a place for being gentlemanly and looking dapper, there are also many times and places where men are allowed and even expected to get grubby. I personally know that a sweaty man is often deeply appealing and very masculine. Think of the greasy auto mechanic or the blacksmith swinging his hefty hammer with sweat pouring off of his hard muscles. These images engender sexual stirrings in many a heart.

Women tend to not have these same freedoms. The wild woman spirit often longs to be out and muck about in the woods, yet this is frowned upon and we are discouraged from being wanton and muddy. Women are expected to trim, pluck, shave, scrub, peel, clip, curl, tuck, lift, squeeze, poke, and iron out all manner of parts of their body in order to achieve being beautiful or feminine. I remember my mother telling me, “It hurts to be beautiful.” She was not making a social commentary on how difficult it must be to bear the burden of beauty but instead teaching me that my role as a woman would require me to suffer pain in order to be desirable.

Womankind often carries this need to be kempt and lovely and so many women find themselves continuing to carry these fears into their love life. Women with these fears of being messy or unclean often shy away from many types of sexual play. I have had many conversations with women about their avoidance of anal sex because there might be poop involved and how they are too scared to really cum during sex because they might pee by mistake.

There was a pamphlet I got at my OB/GYN’s office about “Urinary Incontinence and Sexual Dysfunction.” In the pamphlet, it described how many women lose the ability to orgasm because they are so ashamed that they squirt when they cum. The point of the pamphlet was to encourage women to seek help for this via surgical intervention to resolve this debilitating problem. While I agree, not having orgasms would be debilitating I do not think peeing when you cum is anything to be upset about.

I also remember reading several passages in various pregnancy and birthing books that discuss how to bear down when pushing a baby out. These each carefully instruct mothers to be to not concern themselves with the possibility of having a bowel movement during this process because the staff would be understanding and would whisk any poo away quickly. Many years ago it was standard practice to give a woman in early labor an enema, in part, to avoid having her resist pushing due to her fear of pooping. Good gracious! Seriously, there you are in the throes of labor about to crown this seemingly impossibly large baby head through your vagina and you are worried about shitting?? Seriously? Yet, this is a real concern that women have struggled with enough to make it part of labor instruction manuals.

Let it go girls! Let yourself be free enough of this fear of being dirty to at least enjoy wild dirty sex. I don’t profess to avoid personal hygiene, far from it. The first things I do every morning are shower, shave, brush my teeth, put on deodorant, and fix my hair. I am all for being lovely and clean. I feel best when I am clean as I begin my day. When it comes to sex though, I am unrestrained.

Farting because I cum really hard does not freak me out. Squirting is all good, the larger the spot on the sheets the hotter the cumming was. Whether or not the squirt is made up of pee or some other liquid is not important at all. Even if it is 100% pissing while I cum, still all good with me. I have even on occasion said in a breathless husky post coitus whisper to Sir, “I think maybe I pooped, can you check?” Thus far he has always been able to report that I had not actually pooped to my relief but even had he come back with a different report, I would not change the way I abandon self-awareness. Sex for me is about being raw and undone. There is nothing withheld from Master. Sweat, tears, piss, shit, blood, and snot all spring forth without restraint.

As we sat and talked about sex and the issuing forth of various bodily fluids (I know, our conversations are so genteel aren’t they?) something occurred to me. I was not always like this sexually. I have always been wild in bed. Even as a teenager I was a cat in heat whenever I had the chance but I was not always without self awareness during intercourse.

I thought about when did that change and as with so many things in my life I realized it was Master’s doing. I remember that the very first time we had penetrative vaginal sex I was on my period. Master and I were very new and dating and he had suggested that he was planning on fucking that night. I became really nervous and finally after much prodding as to why I was upset, I admitted that I was having my period and I was scared to have sex because it might upset him. I remember him laughing and saying, “Even better!” I was really upset then and started crying and explaining to him that he didn’t understand because he was a man and girls are taught that periods are very dirty and I pretty much had a little emotional meltdown. Once he saw that for me this was really a problem he stopped chuckling, looked me in the eyes, and explained slowly and sincerely that period or no he wanted me. Period blood was a part of me and my womanhood and he wanted all of me. Needless to say, we had some hot fucking in pretty short order.

Master spent many an hour expressing in clear and direct ways that every part of me was acceptable to him, desired by him, and owned by him. Finding out that his pleasure was secured best through my willingness to be exposed and vulnerable to him in all ways was the key to finding myself completely unaware of my fears about my body during sex. I never think about my body as unattractive or dirty when he is fucking me. Now I feel only lusty sexy open desire to be consumed in his lust. Perhaps that is unseemly in some way, but it is not unseemly to him and he is all that matters in my sexual world.

I am a terrible liar. When I try, I always get this red cheeked goofy expression on my face and stammer and pretty much give up. I can play poker ok. I can tell a white lie to spare someone’s feelings by giving a compliment that is based in truth. I can cover my internal emotional responses when in a professional situation. Generally, I am a functional liar in all the ways that are socially expected of humans but when it comes to just flat out lying, I suck.

For example, there was this wonderful scene Master and I had where he did a cutting on my back of geometric shapes on my shoulder blades. A day or so after the scene, I forgot all about the cutting and wore a tank top. My teenage son walked into the kitchen and said, “What’s that on your back?” He was about 18 but Master had determined that we did not speak openly about our sexual habits so I knew I was caught in a moment requiring a lie. I stammered, “It is an inkless tattoo.”

I thought that I had done very well indeed coming up with a sort of true vanilla-ish reply until my son responded with, “Who did it?” He, being the curious type, wanted to know where such a thing as an inkless tattoo parlor was so it seemed to him a fair question. At that point I panicked, unable to come up with a follow up to the half truth, pointed and Master and said, “He did.” Master then had to come up with suitable deflections as I had just completely thrown him under the bus.

Today at work this problem arose once again but for a little different reason. First it should be noted that Master and I are traveling a good bit during the next several months. Taking a little extra time off of work is part and parcel of attending and presenting at various conferences across the country. In my office, there is a calendar on my wall that shows what I am up to at work and when I am out on leave. There are three days this week marked with ‘on leave’ because Master is taking us to attend Northwest Leather Celebration in San Jose, CA. I have been giddy with excitement as I cross off days till we head out on our adventure.

My coworkers, being curious sorts, often ask me where I am going or why I am taking leave. I have no good vanilla explanations for traveling all over and when I return to work, I rarely have clear tales of my vacation time to share. This frustrates them but I am able to come up with inkless tattoo level responses and manage to be friendly without being direct.

Today one of my coworkers asked me, “When are you leaving on your big trip?” I was caught off guard and said, “Which one?” She looked at me as though I was crazy and said, “Alaska, of course.” Well at that point I was in a socially awkward bind because I clearly was planning another trip aside from the fabulous adventure that is going to Alaska. The idea that I hadn’t mentioned a whole other trip just weeks before leaving for Alaska clearly upset her. I managed to say, “Oh…uhm… we are going to San Jose this weekend, I wasn’t sure which one you meant.”

This is when the conversation got really hard. She looked at me and in an instant I knew that she was not questioning why I would go to San Jose or why I was going to Alaska. She was simply jealous that I was going anywhere at all. It was no longer the kinky part of my travel that was a social problem to be covered up, it was the embarrassment of riches in getting to travel so much that was lighting up the angry fold between her eyebrows.

How could I lie away my joy? How could I make up a tale to allay the fact that I was living a life filled with happy adventures with a husband that, strange to the vanilla world, I always spoke highly of? How could I apologize that my life is one I adore while 99% of the people I work with wander through a life they feel saddled by, doing work they don’t find fulfillment in, and living with long since estranged partners that they feel obligated to stay with? As I mentioned, I am a terrible liar and faced with this level of social awkward I did the best I could do and simply said, “I am really looking forward to it,” and walked away.

There is no way to justify when you are unacceptably happy to those around you. BDSM and M/s are not proselytizing religions. I am not called by a higher power to lead them to the ‘truth’ of better living through authenticity or submission. There is nothing I can do to make that real and possible for them because I have no way of knowing if it would even give them joy. All I could do is walk away and continue to be happy. Though I felt bad that she was jealous, what I felt afterward was not guilt but appreciation for all that my Master has provided for me. He works diligently to find ways to give me pleasure, joy, and fulfillment of all that my heart desires before I even am aware I desire it. No amount of service or surrender seems worthy of all he does for me. I wish with all my heart that the grumpy coworkers around me could feel joyful too.

“That’s it! I’ve had it. I am sick and tired of being a fetcher, cleaner, packer, carrier, washer, folder, organizer, etc! Done…over it…arrrrg”. Rant, rant, rant inside my head, bursting forth in a random diatribe. “I am sick and tired of you being lazy! You expect me to do everything. There you sit on your ass while I am rushing around doing shit for you.” Stomp, stomp, stomp. Rant some more. More of the same though the words and are switched around and ever more colorful metaphors spring to life. “You are a lump of lifeless stone while I am a grunting mindless drone working my ass off…for what?? Nothing!” Rawr! Rant, rant, rant.

Likely five minutes long felt like an hour. I was pissed off and making no polite deferring kind respectful bones about it. There sat Master looking a bit dazed. He had that sort of “WTF” expression.

Without giving him time to take a breath I blazed on, “You aren’t even going to respond? You don’t give a shit about what I as saying…why would you? This is all great for you. You get all your stuff done. You don’t have to lift a finger.”

More blank stare.

STOMP. “I am not a sla…” The rest of the word ‘slave’ left unspoken, I corrected to, “…servant!” Then I stopped short and said nothing.

There was the rub. Servant versus slave. During the week, he had been stressed out. He had checked out for a few hours that afternoon. Off I went going about doing all the things I normally do for him while he was just floating by. I had no clue what was wrong but was getting more and more pissed off with each passing moment. Finally I broke into a million ranting shards of myself. I was lost and clueless as to how to recover from the emotional swan dive.

Master sat and looked more confused now that I had stopped ranting.

I suddenly stumbled over my words. Still anger in my voice but also terrified and confused. “I hate being a maid. I wouldn’t take the job for a million dollars. I don’t like it one bit. I am just a worthless servant without meaning. I am supposed to be your slave! This is all wrong. You left me on my own, and now I am angry and want to tell you to shove it.”

He chuckled slightly. “Ok, I get that now. Calm down…it will be alright.” That last said as he grabbed a hold of me by my hair and pulled me down close to his chest. “I am sorry I left you alone. I’m here now and you are fine. Now, go and finish packing.”

At once I was feeling shaky and crying a little and very much relieved.

He had not actually left me physically alone. Instead he was emotionally disconnected. Long work weeks for both of us and too many responsibilities to vanilla life had distracted us without us even knowing it. He had left the building as surely as Elvis; I kept right on doing things he normally would have told me to do.

I did not wait. I did not get still before my Master and wait for his will. I assumed. I made myself into a worker bee instead of an owned beloved slave. Rush, rush all about I went. Doing, doing, doing…never realizing I was paddling my little canoe farther and farther away from the safety of my shore. By the time I noticed I was drowning, I was a mess.

Master towed me back into shore. He never pointed out that I was the one who had gotten me into trouble. Like a father lovingly drying off his half-drowned little girl he simply made sure I was alright and knew already the lesson was taught plainly enough by the experience.